Revision as of 20:35, 30 December 2013

Title text: There are a lot of graduate-educated young-earth creationists.

Explanation

A conspiracy theory purports to explain a social, political, or economic event as being caused or covered up by a covert group or organization. A typical example is the moon landing conspiracy, which asserts that no human has ever reached the Moon.

Once a conspiracy theory starts, it often grows stronger. Facts agreeing with the theory are, of course, evidence for the theory. Facts disagreeing with the theory are considered part of the cover-up, and thus prove there is in fact a cover-up, so they're also evidence for the theory. In the Moon landing case, videos of men walking on the Moon are assumed to be faked by Hollywood studios, so the existence of fake videos proves the cover-up. Also, the absence of filming crew or anything else needed for faking a video is considered further proof of how carefully the cover-up was planned. No matter what happens next, it will be evidence for the conspiracy theory. Because of this, people who present facts against a conspiracy theory tend to get quickly frustrated.

It could seem like smart or educated people should reject conspiracy theories for lack of proof, however this is not the case. In the comic, Hairy (who is considered "smart" by Cueball) starts pointing out errors in the "official" 9/11 story, obviously starting to describe the 9/11 conspiracy theory. Cueball cuts his speech sharply, and his heart is broken because he's seeing his smart friend wasting his great intelligence in a foolish conspiracy theory, instead of doing something useful.

In the second panel, Cueball rants about conspiracy theories in general. He mentions Young Earth creationism, the Moon landing and Perpetual motion machines. In the third panel, Hairy mentions that of course we never landed on the Moon. This frustrates Cueball so much that he just walks away with no further comment.

In the last panel, Cueball asks God to fix the bug he committed when creating smart beings capable of believing such foolish things as conspiracy theories. This is a not-so-subtle joke as, to atheists, God himself is quite similar to a conspiracy theory. Indeed, any evidence against God's existence put forward by an atheist is met with a "whatever happens, it's God's will" by believers' side. This is much like any other conspiracy theory, so in this last panel Cueball is pictured as contradicting himself by complaining that other people believe in foolish conspiracy theories when he himself is very plainly believing his own foolish conspiracy theory.

Of course, from believers' perspective, atheism also has many characteristics of a conspiracy theory. In particular, atheism and agnosticism are a small subculture--actually smaller in the U.S. than the 9/11 Truth movement--that thinks a large majority of people (about 95% of Americans believe in God [citation needed]) have been deluded into believing something ridiculous by conspiracies (i.e. churches and conservative politicians) that benefit from spreading misinformation on the subject. Some atheists are rational in that they take evidence against this position seriously and adjust their beliefs to fit all the facts, but some are quite willing to make claims that have been decisively refuted.

A "bug report" is a description of some error that occurred when using a computer program, to inform the developer of a problem that needs to be fixed. Filing a "bug report" to God should be unnecessary, as God is generally understood by believers to be omniscient, and thus already aware of the problem (and allows it to exist for inexplicable "God's will" reasons).

Transcript

Hairy: The official story of 9-11 is full of holes. Take the--

Cueball: Please, stop, because seeing this happen to you breaks my heart.

Cueball: Conspiracy theories represent a known glitch in human reasoning. The theories are of course occasionally true, but their truth is completely uncorrelated with the believer's certainty For some reason, sometimes when people think they've uncovered a lie, they raise confirmation bias to an art form. They cut context away from facts and arguments and assemble them into reassuring litanies. And over and over I've argued helplessly with smart people consumed by theories they were sure were irrefutable, theories that in the end proved complete fictions.

Cueball: Young-Earth Creationists, the Moon Landing people, the Perpetual Motion subculture -- can't you see you're falling into the same pattern?

Discussion

I have an alternate interpretation of the last panel: instead of Randall using the concept of religion as a conspiracy theory, Cueball clearly believes in a god that exists and this god answers when directly addressed. The existing paragraph's explanation seems to bypass most of the humor in favor of the irony in the religion-conspiracy link. Each time I see this comic, I view the last panel as Cueball (who I would expect to participate in user-driven software quality assurance) legitimately contacting the author/creator (of the universe/Earth/Humanity) to submit a bug report in the same way he would contact the Firefox developers about a bug in their browser. However, it does stand to reason that Randall could have intended both the in-place joke and the external irony.Tryc (talk) 14:44, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree that there is nothing in the comic to suggest a 'religion' or 'atheist' conspiracy theory. I personally would just trash it, but people are sensitive to religious crap, I find. I also have a personal belief that the majority of the 95% (or whatever the true figure is) of Americans who believe in God do so only to the extent that they will answer 'Yes' to a survey question asking if they believe in God. Such a belief does not otherwise inform or alter their lives in any perceptible way. 108.162.219.223 19:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

For me, the most interesting tension comes from ("self-reflective") bug report which doesn't (only) refer to conspiracy theorists but, maybe even more, to Cueball himself who beleives in God but still thinks that his own belief in God is a bug to be reported. Reporting could be seen as reporting to God in which he beleives. And that's the simple one. But also reporting that bug could be a report to the consciousness existing beyond the constraints of very comic Cueball is part of. That consciousness is then xkcd audience. Existence of such a consciousness beyond comic's universe would be the equivalent of God in some other universe. Self-reflective awareness of that "alien" existence, and not having a proof for its own comic universe, would make Cueball a religious guy. Randall Munroe decides about the proving possibilities in this particular case. Marcell (talk) 00:39, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

There's a bug in paragraph three... As of the time of this comment, the second sentence reads "The people are more involved in this questioned issues are just getting frustrated about this human behavior." As written, this is nonsense, and clearly exhibits several grammar errors. Unfortunately the explanation lacks clear clues as to what this sentence is intended to convey, so I have no point of reference from which to fix it without occluding the intended meaning. Help, please. 108.162.216.88 02:18, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

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